Beyond The Last Lamp

(Near Tooting Common) I     While rain, with eve in partnership,     Descended darkly, drip, drip, drip,     Beyond the last lone lamp I passed         Walking slowly, whispering sadly,         Two linked loiterers, wan, downcast:     Some heavy thought constrained each face,     And blinded them to time and place. II     The pair seemed lovers, yet absorbed     In mental scenes no longer orbed     By love's young rays. Each countenance         As it slowly, as it sadly         Caught the lamplight's yellow glance     Held in suspense a misery     At things which had been or might be. III     When I retrod that watery way     Some hours beyond the droop of day,     Still I found pacing there the twain         Just as slowly, just as sadly,         Heedless of the night and rain.     One could but wonder who they were     And what wild woe detained them there. IV     Though thirty years of blur and blot     Have slid since I beheld that spot,     And saw in curious converse there         Moving slowly, moving sadly         That mysterious tragic pair,     Its olden look may linger on -     All but the couple; they have gone. V     Whither? Who knows, indeed . . . And yet     To me, when nights are weird and wet,     Without those comrades there at tryst         Creeping slowly, creeping sadly,         That lone lane does not exist.     There they seem brooding on their pain,     And will, while such a lane remain.